Full Throttle - On This Day

The former LucasArts was the king of the point’n’click genre in the 1990s with hits such as Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Maniac Mansion, and others. The second half of that decade was equally successful with Grim Fandango, but also before that with the biker adventure Full Throttle. According to the chief designer, Tim Schafer, this idea of the game originated in a biker bar where Schafer came up with the idea that bikers are similar to pirates.

LucasArts did not like the idea at first but approved $ 1.5 million to develop the game. At the time, that was enough to hire professional actors like Mark Hamill, Roy Conrad, and others. The development of the game took a little over a year, which was a crazy pace even for Tim Schafer.

Interestingly, Full Throttle was the first LucasArts game for Windows operating systems, as well as the first LucasArts adventure to be distributed on CD-ROM. The story of Ben and his biker gang was an unexpected hit, and instead of the planned 100,000 copies, it sold more than a million copies. Today it is considered one of the best examples of the PNC genre.

Full Throttle unfortunately never got a sequel, although in 2000, one was in development. Two years later, LucasArts wanted to turn Full Throttle into an action-adventure with Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels for consoles, but that game was eventually canceled. Actor Roy Conrad, who lent his voice to the main character, passed away the same year.

To keep the game from falling into oblivion, Schafer’s Double Fine Studios has tweaked it for the current generation of consoles in a remastered release that came out at this time of 2017.